Talk:problematic

Social justice

This is a buzzword in feminism, critical theory, etc. as a Google Books search for "women of color" problematic will confirm. It is also widely used by those social justice people on Tumblr. Equinox ◑ 05:18, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

It seems to merit a separate (sub)sense, meaning something like "contributing (usually implicitly or subtly) to systemic racism, sexism, homophobia or other discrimination". Behaviour that is labelled "problematic" seems to be distinguished from behaviour that is "hardcore" (explicitly/overtly/intentionally) racist, sexist, etc, which is simply "racist", "sexist", etc.

Here's a Washington Post article where the URL approximately matches the headline but substitutes "racist" for "problematic":

• 2015 April 10, Paige Tutt, Apple’s new diverse emoji are even more problematic than before: Racialized emoji insert race into texts and tweets where it never would have arisen before

- -sche (discuss) 03:08, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

 Done A sense was added at some point. Equinox ◑ 17:26, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

It's true that the word "problematic" is often used where injustices are a topic of discussion, but isn't this similar to the way that people often say "piece of fruit" when pointing to an apple or a banana, or "mammal" when pointing at a kangaroo? The fact that watermelons are a kind of fruit doesn't mean that "a watermelon" should go in a dictionary as one of the senses of "piece of fruit", any more than "a lion" should appear as a definition of the word "mammal".

If people feel that the cited cases are not covered by by the entry as it was prior to the addition of the third sense, then maybe the entry was just poorly organized. I'm thinking in particular of the way the hierarchy of sense was ordered. Instances of e.g. racism might be said to "pose a problem" (the general definition), but are they, by the same token, "difficult to decide", or "uncertain" (the two sub-definitions)? Maybe, but maybe that's not what people mean whey they say "problematic" about things they think are racist.

Drawing on some other dictionaries might help. Cambridge's online dictionary has just two senses: "full of problems or difficulties" and "causing difficulty, hard to deal with". Merriam-Webster has more, but nothing so specific as "contributing to systemic discrimination".

I'm going to go ahead and delete the third sense. It's been deleted and reverted before, I see. If people think it should be reinstated, maybe we can have a discussion about this (apparently somewhat problematic issue -- by which of course I mean doubtful, or difficult to solve) here. Aingotno (talk) 13:21, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

• I have posted about this at Wiktionary:Tea_room/2020/October#problematic where it will hopefully attract broader input. - -sche (discuss) 01:04, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Translations to be checked

The ninth edition (2010) of the Collins Robert Unabridged French-English Dictionary gives problematic(al) and problematique as mutual translations of each other in both the French-to-English and the English-to-French sections. Dick Kimball (talk) 19:20, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

problematicize

problematic + -ize Backinstadiums (talk) 15:04, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

"leftism" vs "politics"

Sense 1.3 of the adjective is listed under the category "leftism" – I think it should be changed to "politics" because that seems more representative of its role in politics as a whole rather than in specific ideologies. Rajdooot (talk) 23:58, 14 December 2022 (UTC)